The Deep Blue Sea at the WYP.

Sometimes I think theatre is wasted on me. Partly it’s because I don’t really get acting. That’s a stupid thing to say but sometimes I think actors just get in the way and I’d rather be at home dangling my feet over the arm of my favourite chair with the script and a half bottle of Black Bush than sat in the dark with a bunch of strangers all gawping at people pretending to be someone else. Yes, I can appreciate the massive effort and the skill required to mount a production, all that time spent learning lines and polishing the public performance, and all the background stuff like set design, music, costumes, props and . . . and well, whatever it is that goes into making theatre work as a spectacle. But for me it’s always the words, the story, the imagined situation that interests me. Everything else seems a bit of a distraction. Apologies to my thespian readers.

That was the sort of rubbish swirling around the littery windtrap of my mind when I went to see Terence Rattigan’s “The Deep Blue Sea” at The West Yorkshire Playhouse the other day. Rattigan was well known for writing beautifully crafted, exquisitely observed entertainments about a very small segment of British society at a very particular moment in time; the respectable middle classes just before and after The Second World War. This was a strange time. Bananas were currency, emotional display was rationed, Dulux only had five colours in the range and four of those were brown. The people weren’t like us either. Women wore sensible frocks and the men all had brilliantined hair. They talked proper posh too. Splitting an infinitive was a capital offence and inarticulacy was considered morally culpable. Swearing in public made hard men faint. Upper lips were starchier than a Hovis crust. In “The Deep Blue Sea” there’s plenty of drama – attempted suicide, wives leaving husbands, lovers abandoning mistresses, drunken arguments – but it’s all so terribly terribly understated and impeccably well-mannered. Even at the climax of the play when the central character, Hester (played by Maxine Peake) has a full blown breakdown, shrieking and sobbing on the public stairs of her boarding house, she soon regains her composure, smooths her dress, checks her mascara for smudges, and carries on, calmly. Rattigan’s play demands tight restraint, no flouncing or dramatical flourishes, and I thought the WYP production did a great job of not bringing attention to the acting and spotlighting the existential situation and the quality of the language.

For me the most interesting relationship in the play is between Hester and Mr Miller. Hester has attempted suicide after realising that the man she left her husband for is deeply disappointing. Her marriage to William Collyer was not unhappy just unfulfilling and it seems that her new lover, Freddy Page, was not all he ought to be – he comes across as shallow, self-absorbed and sexually immature. Hester was serious about taking her own life but was stymied by her lack of pharmaceutical understanding and financial difficulties – she didn’t know that 12 aspirin would not kill her and she was short of a shilling to put in the meter to make sure there was enough gas in the oven to finish her off. Mr Miller’s intervention is brutal, “horribly efficient” as Hester says. He slaps her hard, twice. Then he demands to know how many pills she has taken. He doesn’t pretend to care and barely manages to be polite. He has no bedside manner. In fact he treats her as if she were a machine that needs fixing. Throughout most of the play he is distant, objective, clinical, completely the opposite of the other men in her life, who both have their own agendas and demands based on their own needs, and her neighbours who are generally intrusive and prurient gossip mongerers. He’s the antithesis of what we’d consider a normal relationship, let alone a therapeutic alliance. Hester can’t go back to William even though she admits she was happy, because all he wants is a “loving wife” and she is “not any longer the same person.” And she can’t carry on with Freddy as he’ll never be able to give her what she wants. So she feels “anger, hatred and shame . . . “ Mr Miller simply does what he needs to do then let’s Hester get on with it, doesn’t try to decide for her, which makes him seem callous to everyone else involved.

In the end though that’s exactly the sort of relationship Hester need to regain her grip on life. In an amusing exchange with Freddy, who asks what he would do in his position, Mr Miller answers, “that’s a stupid question. Nature has not endowed me with the capacity for inspiring suicidal love,” and when Hester asks him “What should I do?” he says the most specific advice he can give is “Take those pills and sleep tonight. In the morning – go on living.” Later, when he’s had to refuse to hand out more tablets and again forced her to confront the harsh truth that Freddy will never provide what she wants, he points to one of her paintings as a reason to go on and face life “beyond hope.” He says he sees a “spark” which might become a little flame with a bit of encouragement, “not a great fire, which could have illumined the world – oh no – I’m not saying that. But the world is a dark enough place for even a little flicker to be welcome.” It’s a beautiful moment, a turning point for Hester who begins to see a creative way forward, not the dubious promise of living without “anger, hate, and shame” but a more mature, productive, realistic way of dealing with inevitable suffering. Mr Miller says he values Hester as a “friend.” Hester immediately turns this around, accusing him of emotional blackmail; “Are you asking me to make my choice in order to help you?” But she soon sees that Mr Miller is simply being “too kind.” He isn’t trying to take the power of choice away from her, just reminding her that the choice to take her own life has ramifications outside her own limited personal consciousness.

This play brought up a number of important questions. How do we help people in mental distress? Is the person in the best position to help out of the intimate dynamic of family and lovers? What are the characteristics and qualities of a genuine helper; warm and fuzzy concern, or cool, harsh honesty? And what about suicide itself? What if a person genuinely wished to take their own life one moment, then found a reason not go through with the deed the next . . . which moment should we take most notice of? I don’t think any of these questions were answered but it’s a testament to the power of Rattigan’s play that the issues he dealt with are very much alive.